AUTHOR'S OTHER TITLES (25) A Capital Fart (Short Stories) The redundant London underground is pressed into service to win a world farting contest. [736 words] [Humor] A Wrong Turn Somewhere (Short Stories) Somewhere near Birmingham a driver takes a wrong turn and loses everything. [492 words] [Mystical] Amnesty (Short Stories) A gun amnesty in a rough borough of London goes idiotically wrong. [561 words] [Comedy] Back To The Garden (Short Stories) Depressing the extent to which everything is being dumbed down these days. Poor state education? Is that all it is? [527 words] [Mind] Changing To Go Out (Short Stories) In the aftermath of the genetic bomb, a simple night at the pictures with the missus is no easy task. [444 words] [Humor] God's Trainees (Short Stories) Him upstairs is thinking of retiring, all he needs to do is train up some suitable replacements. Easier said than done. They just don't make deities the way the used to. [1,570 words] [Humor] Mementoes Of Treasured Occasions (Short Stories) A struggling photographer finds a rich new source of business. [496 words] [Humor] Providing For Sarah (Short Stories) A desolate man finds comfort in an imaginary (?) companion. But who will care for her when he's gone? [883 words] [Mind] Sex Life Of The Amoeba (Short Stories) A serious paper on cellular mytosis in a well known eukarytic organism. The dirty little... [1,108 words] [Humor] Soup (Short Stories) A soup manufacturer ends life on Earth. [514 words] [Comedy] The Adventures Of Archie 1 - The Great Escape (Short Stories) A sort of Alice in Wonderland meets Canterbury Tales sort of thing but sillier than the former and even more boring than the latter. In episode 1 our elderly rabbit hero escapes his hutch and disappe... [473 words] [Humor] The Adventures Of Archie 2 - The Little Demon's Tale (Short Stories) A hell spawned satanic creature identifies too much with men and falls to their level. [901 words] [Humor] The Adventures Of Archie 3 - The Spider Catcher's Tale. (Short Stories) Archie escapes from the paralysing purple and find himself in a world where an avoidable infestation has eaten all the perspective. There he meets the spider catcher and learns why ballroom dancing i... [1,313 words] [Humor] The Adventures Of Archie 4a - The Great Regurgitato (Short Stories) Achie learns of the greats of bodily functions and meets the greatest of them all. [781 words] [Humor] The Adventures Of Archie 4b - The Great Regurgitato's Tale (Short Stories) Continued. [823 words] [Humor] The Adventures Of Archie 5a - The Army Surplus Salesman (Short Stories) Archie learns the truth they try and keep from us, that being disembowelled is fun, meets a descendant of the Piltdown man and travels to the army surplus fair to find Little Boy is no bargain. [913 words] The Adventures Of Archie 6 - A Peaceful Solution (Short Stories) Following a Little Boy explosion Archie find himself on a desolate plain and meets two tribes who are too stupid to realise that war and bloodshed are by far the most efficient means of resolving disp... [1,271 words] [Humor] The Adventures Of Archie 7 - The Puzzleman's Tale (Short Stories) Archie finds he is not alone in the valley. He shares it with a man in a very strange prison. You have to endure a little homily on man's inhumanity to decorating materials first. [2,988 words] [Humor] The Adventuresof Archie 5b - The Army Surplus Salesman's Tale (Short Stories) Continued. [1,116 words] The Fly And... (Short Stories) That Geoff Goldblum had it easy! One fly?? I should have been so lucky! [483 words] [Humor] The Horrid Tale Of Evil Worm (Short Stories) A rare accident in the vegetable patch transforms a humble earthworm into a satanic being. [1,158 words] The Several Voyages Of Fat Tony (Short Stories) Foul deeds on the dead sea coast get their richly deserved comeuppance. [1,377 words] The Two Bills (Short Stories) William Shakespeare fails to get to grips with Microsoft Word. [777 words] Vomiting On Tony (Short Stories) The Mad Messiah (AKA Tony Blair) gets what he thoroughly deserves. [499 words] [Humor] Your Little God Is Pooh And Creepy Too (Short Stories) Only the innocent find salvation. In the run up to the revelation the kids of St Crispin's Middle School are introduced to their own little salvations. PS I know Buddha was not a god, it's creative l... [1,442 words] [Humor]
Arnie Xoggoth
I was almost starting to enjoy my job as a builder and decorator. The money was rather a come down from that of an IT contractor, but on the other hand I had no hassles, the other blokes I worked with were ok and I was home for tea nearly every evening.
Most of all I liked working with Arnie. Arnold Schwartzkoff was the boss's son. He was 5 feet 4, probably weighed about 9 stone and was not very bright. But Arnie had style. Like lots of small men he always imagined himself much bigger and tougher than he was and Arnie had imagination by the bucketful. Naturally with his name he modelled himself on Arnold Schwartznegger.
I first discovered how real Arnie's fantasies could be when we decorated Bothem hall. We had to restore some oak panels by stripping decades of paint off them and it was really hard going, some of the original coats were probably worth mining. Wally and I were flaming and scraping away when Arnie came in. He had one of those big flame things you kill weeds with and he had obviously spent time modifying it.
Off the shoulder with a flourish and pointed at the panels on the other wall. "Strip this assholes" he growled in his best Austrian accent and pulled the trigger. An enormous flame shot out and engulfed the entire wall. He stopped after four minutes when the gas cylinder ran out. Not only had the paint stripped off the oak panels but the oak panels had stripped off the wall and the ceiling was alight. We legged it.
Old man Schwartzkoff doted on Arnie so, despite the effect the incident must have had on his insurance premium, he kept him on. Arnie behaved himself for a while after that, but you can't keep a good terminator down forever.
Some months later we had to remove an ironwork staircase from another old house that was being modernised. A very saleable item, but there was no way of getting it out of the door in one piece. We sent Arnie back for the cutting gear. Big mistake.
"I'll be back". We dived for the back door as soon as we heard the engine. Arnie came through the side of the house in a muck spreader he had 'borrowed' from the nearby farm. "There you go, plenty of room" he growled. There was plenty of room to get the staircase out all right but we did not get the chance. The owner had been upstairs at the time and was lucky to escape with his life. There was no way we could pretend this was an unfortunate accident and Arnie got probation for criminal damage.
For almost a year after that Arnie kept his nose clean but it did not last. We had to replace the lounge window in a bungalow by a much wider picture window. This meant knocking out a large part of the wall and we knew from the work we had just finished in the kitchen it would be a tough job as the cement in the walls was as hard as iron. The owner had been enthusing about the great vista he would have when the window was in. There was an odd look on Arnie's face.
God knows where Arnie got the explosives. When me and Wally drove up to the house next morning we could see him already in and standing in front of the window. Something in his face told us not to get out of the van. Arnie roared "Hasta La Vista Baby" and the entire front of the bungalow blew out.
Shortly after Arnie's funeral I unexpectedly got offered a contract by an old client. It would be nice to get back to some real money again, but I would quite miss working at Schwartzkoff and Son and most of all I would miss Arnie.
Submit Your Review for Arnie
Required fields are marked with (*). Your e-mail address will not be displayed.